Re-Imagining Digital Technology and Media As Care-Giving Assistant for Parents of Young Children

EasyChair Preprint 6892

Abstract

Digital technologies are used by stressed families to achieve work life balance, avoiding conflict for maintaining peaceful family environment, and for educational opportunities for children. Using digital devices to engage children is especially common in situations where parents have to work from home for extended periods of time, like in the recent event of a pandemic which became a global health concern. They are also used by parents of young children who live at a distance from their family and friends, and have limited access to childcare services. Children of such parents spend a lot of time indoors, with either or both parents looking after them. These parents seek help from technology for engaging their children while they complete tasks in the absence of help, regardless of its associated drawbacks. Their choice of doing so lies in the lack of options available to them including affordable and reliable childcare, balancing time constraints, as well as their cultural, social and academic responsibilities. In this paper, we call attention to the technology needs of such parents of young children by crafting parent personas and scenarios by incorporating a dyadic approach to persona design. Our choice of using personas was motivated by their narrative structure and effectiveness, which makes it an ideal choice for putting forth the design space for care giving technologies for our intended user population. These personas are later situated in narrative scenarios to help designers and developers identify with users, putting their needs and requirements ahead of their own. We conclude by discussing implications for practice of using digital technology as childcare assistant by this group of parents.

Keyphrases: Care giving, children, digital childcare, digital media

@booklet{EasyChair:6892,
  author    = {Neelma Bhatti and D. Scott McCrickard and Aisling Kelliher},
  title     = {Re-Imagining Digital Technology and Media As Care-Giving Assistant for Parents of Young Children},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6892},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}